


Dreaming of You

by aphreal



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, MultiWarden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphreal/pseuds/aphreal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neria has always had very vivid dreams, and her dream friends were the best part of her childhood. What if those imaginary playmates weren't just dreams after all? What if they need her help?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Past

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a kinkmeme prompt, and huge credit for the idea goes to the OP.

Neria could remember exactly when she’d met her first imaginary dream-friend. She had been exploring in her sleep, wandering from dreamscape to dreamscape, watching the people and things that filled her sleeping mind. 

Loud shouting had caught her attention, and she’d turned to see a boy swinging a sword at straw dummies in fancy uniforms. He was yelling enthusiastically even though he rarely hit the straw men. 

Curious, Neria approached him, staying well back to avoid the flailing blade. “What are you doing?”

“Killing Orlesians,” he responded. “I’m King Maric!”

Neria stared at him dubiously, thinking he couldn’t be much older than she was, certainly not as grown up as the king. “No, you aren’t.”

“I can be if I want to.” He grew as he spoke, becoming a tall blond man in shiny silver armor with a pale sword that glowed blue. 

Neria thought his face still looked more like a little boy than the profile she’d seen on coins, but it probably wasn’t polite to say so. “What do you want to do now, your kingship?”

“We have to kill all the Orlesians so I can avenge my mother and win my throne.” 

Neria decided that sounded like more fun than walking through lots of different dream places, so the two of them spent the rest of the night pretending to be heroes and hitting straw soldiers dressed in fancy uniforms. 

*

Neria went to play with Not-King-Maric in her dreams off and on after that. They had lots of great adventures, all of which included him dressed in shiny armor with a glowing sword, no matter who he said he was pretending to be. Neria had never dreamed about swords and battle before, and she enjoyed sharing Not-King-Maric’s games. 

Then she met the wolf-girl. 

Neria was used to most of the places in her dreams looking a lot the same: houses, open fields, sometimes woods. The treehouse in the top of a giant tree was something different, so she went to look at it. An elf girl with dirty, scraped knees was sitting in the treehouse, glaring down through the branches. Neria had never been in the top of a tree, so she sat down next to the other elf girl to enjoy the view. 

“I’m going to be a wolf when I grow up,” the other girl announced after a few minutes, still staring downwards. 

“I don’t think it works that way,” Neria said. “You have to grow up to be an elf, same as me.” 

“I don’t want to be an elf.” The other girl turned to glare at Neria. “Elves live in dirty, smelly alienages where humans tell them what to do and hurt them for no reason. Wolves run in the forest, and if a human even looks mean at a wolf, the wolf can kill it. You can be a stupid elf if you want to, but _I’m_ going to be a wolf.” 

The wolf-girl was scarier than Not-King-Maric, even though she didn’t have a sword, so Neria didn’t visit her as often. But she liked the treehouse, being so far above everything, so she went there sometimes to sit with the wolf-girl and look down on tiny people below them. 

*

After seeing the treehouse, Neria searched her dreams for other places that were interesting and different, places that weren’t like her waking life. 

That was how she first found the tunnels. 

The tunnels were big and empty, like giant stone hallways. They were hard to find because there weren’t very many of them. Neria liked them because she could walk and walk and never see the sky. It was a different way to look at the world, just as different as sitting in the top of a tree. Neria thought the best thing about dreams was seeing new places and dreaming about what it would be like to live there. 

The tunnels, she discovered, would be a very noisy place to live. She followed the loud clanging noises until she found a dwarf girl standing in the middle of a big room full of metal things hitting one of them with a large hammer. 

Neria covered her ears to block out the noise and walked closer, trying to figure out what the dwarf girl was doing. The metal things were bent into strange shapes and looked very complicated. The most complicated one was sitting on a big anvil so the dwarf girl could hit it. Every time the hammer hit it, it made a loud clanging noise and the metal thing became even more complicated. 

The dwarf girl had very strong-looking arms with lots of scars and burns on them, but her face had no marks on it at all. Neria tried to talk to the girl, but the hammer noises were so loud that she couldn’t hear herself, even after she took her hands off her ears. 

Neria stood in front of the anvil and waved her arms until the dwarf girl looked at her and stopped hammering. “What are you doing?” Neria asked once it was quiet enough to talk. 

“I’m a smith,” the girl answered. “I’m making things.” 

Neria looked at the complicated metal thing on the anvil and tried to guess what it might be good for. “What kind of things?”

“Important things that people need and appreciate.” 

Neria liked that answer. She thought that was a very nice way of saying, “I don’t know.” 

When Neria didn’t say anything else, the smith girl started hammering again, and the big stone room filled back up with loud clanging. 

Neria stayed to watch for a little while, waiting to find out what the smith girl was making. She left when her head started to hurt from the noise, but she came back on other nights to watch the smith girl work on her important things. 

*

The next time Neria found tunnels, they were darker and smaller but much less noisy. Instead of a smith banging on metal things, there was a dwarf boy with an axe in one hand and a shield in the other. His armor and weapon looked less shiny and more solid than Not-King-Maric’s. He was standing in the tunnel not fighting anything. Neria thought maybe he was waiting for something, so she waited too. 

But nothing happened, and Neria got bored waiting. “What are you going to fight?” she asked, thinking that was more polite than asking if he was ever going to fight anything. 

“Darkspawn,” the boy answered. “I’m going to kill a lot of them and reclaim the abandoned thaigs and our lost history. I’ll be a Paragon.” 

Neria didn’t know what a thaig or a Paragon was, and she wasn’t sure how history got lost either. Killing lots of darkspawn sounded exciting, though, so she liked that part. Except that he wasn’t actually _doing_ it yet. 

“That sounds like it would take a long time,” Neria said. “Maybe you should start soon.” Neria was proud of herself. That was much nicer than saying she was bored. 

Paragon nodded. “It’s time to begin my real training. You go stand over there.” He pointed to a spot further back in the tunnel. 

“I can fight, too,” Neria insisted. She imagined the sword that Not-King-Maric had given her and showed it to Paragon. “See? I have a weapon.” 

“You don’t have training. You can’t fight darkspawn unless you’ve learned how.” 

Neria thought that was a stupid rule, but she was pretty sure that Paragon wasn’t going to fight anything until she did what he said. And she really wanted to see a darkspawn. So she unimagined the sword and stood where Paragon had pointed. 

Paragon faced the other way down the tunnel, and an ugly thing ran out of the darkness at him. It had green skin and sharp teeth and waved a long knife. Neria was very excited as she watched Paragon fight the darkspawn. This was much more fun than swinging a sword at straw men!

It would have been even better if Paragon had let her fight, too. 

Paragon hit the darkspawn in the face with his shield and cut its arm almost off with his axe. Its knife made loud screeching noises against Paragon’s armor, but it didn’t cut him. Neria clapped and cheered when the ugly thing fell over and Paragon hacked its head off. She made Paragon promise that she could come back later to see him kill more darkspawn and maybe even help. 

Neria couldn’t think of anything more exciting than killing darkspawn of her very own someday. 

*

Neria met the last of her dream-friends in a forest. It wasn’t strange to find dream forests, and Neria thought most of them were boring. But this forest was different. 

It was very big. Neria walked for hours but never left the forest. It was very old. The trees were tall, even taller than the wolf-girl’s treehouse. It was very quiet. Neria could tell lots of things lived in the forest, but she didn’t see or hear them. Neria thought this forest was what other forests would dream about being when they grew up. 

The forest had everything Neria thought a forest should have. Some places had ferns and mist and streams. Other places had sunlight and wildflowers. Then it had an elf, stepping from behind a tree. He was tall and almost a grown-up with a stern face and sharp eyes. 

“Who are you?” he asked her. Neria was surprised. People in dreams usually let her ask the first question. 

“I’m Neria. Is this your forest?”

“Forests don’t belong to people. It’s not my forest; I’m its guardian. I’m Theron.” 

“It’s a very nice forest.” It was, and Neria thought Theron might be more friendly if she was nice to his forest. Even though he said it wasn’t his forest. 

“It is,” Theron agreed. 

Theron didn’t say anything else, and Neria wasn’t sure what else to talk to him about. So Neria stood quietly and looked at the forest and thought. She thought about the wolf-girl in her one tall tree, looking sad and lonely and wanting to be a wolf in a forest. 

“I have a friend who would like your forest. Would you mind if I bring her to see it?”

“It’s not my forest,” Theron repeated. “But it welcomes anyone who respects it.” 

Neria thought that was probably a yes, so she decided to bring the wolf-girl to visit Theron’s forest next time she saw her. Maybe being here would make her less sad and angry. 

*

It wasn’t easy to talk the wolf-girl into going to Theron’s forest. She didn’t like to leave her tree house because she felt safe there. So Neria told her about every wonderful thing in the forest she could think of until the wolf-girl was so curious that she agreed to go see it for herself. 

Neria had never tried taking someone with her from one dream place to another. But she decided it shouldn’t be any different than going by herself, so it wasn’t. 

The forest was exactly the way Neria remembered it, and Theron found her sooner this time. Neria wondered if it was because two people were easier to notice than one or if he knew she was looking for him. She introduced the wolf-girl to Theron and asked him if they could explore his forest. 

“It’s not my forest,” Theron said. “But I will gladly share what I know, and you are both welcome here.” 

“It’s beautiful.” 

Neria had never heard the wolf-girl sound anything but angry before, and she had never seen her look happy instead of scared and sad. Neria was glad she had brought her friend here to be happy, even if the wolf-girl was only part of a dream. Even dreams deserved to not be sad all of the time. 

For the rest of that night, Neria followed along as Theron showed the wolf-girl every special thing about the forest he said didn’t belong to him. 

When they were ready to leave, Neria imagined a very long string. She tied one end of it to a tree in Theron’s forest and the other end to a branch near the wolf-girl’s tree house so the wolf-girl could find her way to the forest without Neria’s help any time she wanted to. 

*  
After that, sometimes Neria found the wolf-girl at the tree house, and sometimes she was in the forest, with or without Theron. Either place, the wolf-girl seemed happier now, and that made Neria happy, too. 

It also gave her an idea. 

*

Not-King-Maric was very good at telling stories about things to fight. Orlesians and Qunari and Tevinter magisters. But he wasn’t very good at imagining them. No matter what he said he and Neria were fighting, they always looked like straw scarecrows dressed up in armor. Not-King-Maric was her first dream friend, and Neria liked having adventures with him. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she didn’t tell him that his games were getting boring. Even though they were. 

“Did King Maric ever fight darkspawn?” Neria asked one night when Not-King-Maric was trying to decide what they should pretend next. 

“Of course!” Not-King-Maric said. “That’s what the magic sword is for: killing darkspawn!” He waved his glowing blue sword around. “We could defeat darkspawn in the Deep Roads tonight if you want.”

“I could show you somewhere with really real darkspawn, and we could fight those instead of straw men dressed up like darkspawn.” Neria hoped that didn’t sound like a complaint. 

Not-King-Maric didn’t answer, but he got very loud and started swinging his sword around even more. Neria decided that probably meant yes, so she took him to find Paragon’s tunnels. 

*

It wasn’t easy to convince Paragon to let Not-King-Maric fight darkspawn with him. Paragon didn’t seem very impressed by shiny armor and a glowing sword. He said Not-King-Maric couldn’t know how to fight if he dressed like that. But eventually Neria persuaded Paragon to imagine a genlock as a test for Not-King-Maric. 

Not-King-Maric’s eyes got very big when he saw his first real darkspawn, and his sword glowed even brighter blue. He fought the genlock the same way he did the straw men, and just like the straw men, the ugly creature flew apart in a puff of dust when Not-King-Maric’s sword hit it. Paragon seemed confused by that, but he agreed to let Not-King-Maric fight darkspawn with him. 

So that night, Neria cheered and clapped as Paragon and Not-King-Maric killed lots and lots of darkspawn in the tunnels. It was even more exciting watching both of them fight together. The only thing that would be better would be getting to kill darkspawn herself. Maybe next time Paragon would let her join them. 

*

After that, Neria gradually introduced the rest of her dream friends to each other, and most nights they all played together. They played tag running through Theron’s forest and pretended to be heroes in Not-King-Maric’s stories. Neria’s favorite nights were spent fighting darkspawn in Paragon’s tunnels. With all six of them together, the monsters didn’t seem scary at all. 

Things weren’t always perfect. The wolf-girl snarled and snapped at Not-King-Maric, and the smith girl didn’t trust Paragon. But Neria could usually talk them into being nice for a few hours, and her dreams were much more fun when all of her friends could play together. 

But eventually Neria grew up, and she forgot about her dream friends. Like any other imaginary friends, they were put aside with the other games and hopes of childhood.


	2. Present

Neria was in a cave. 

She was almost certain that she was supposed to be in Senior Enchanter Wynne’s creation lecture with the other apprentices, but instead, she seemed to be in a cave. She would have been more bothered by this if it weren’t such an intriguing cave. Neria had never seen anything quite like it, awake or asleep. It was clearly ancient, and the architecture bore a mystifying mixture of human and elvish traits. 

As sometimes happened in dreams, Neria felt like an observer with no control over her actions. The feeling was annoying when she wanted to stop and study some feature of the ruins more closely, but she was grateful to not be in charge of fighting off the giant spiders and other nightmare monsters that attacked. Especially since she was fighting with a bow, and she’d never learned to shoot one. 

Neria had the overwhelming sense that she shouldn’t be here, in a way that had nothing to do with missing a creation lecture and everything to do with the subtle sense of wrongness that pervaded the very air. She felt her pulse quicken as she moved further into the ruins. 

There was another elf exploring the cave with her. Neria didn’t recognize him, but he seemed to consider her a friend. That didn’t strike her as any stranger than the rest of the situation, so she wasn’t too concerned by it. The other elf called her Theron, and the name seemed vaguely familiar, like she had known someone called that a long time ago. But that was one more little mystery in a whole host of strangeness, so she didn’t spend too much time worrying about it. 

Neria’s fascination with the ruins grew as they continued deeper into the caves, as did her sense of unease. It was almost stifling, a feeling of wrongness pressing down on her from every direction and making her skin prickle. She wanted to shudder, to scream, but she was merely a passenger, watching but unable to act. 

Her distress grew as they approached a strange mirror standing in the middle of an open cavern. It seemed to radiate sinister malice, and Neria couldn’t understand why her friend was approaching it with fascination instead of dread. Couldn’t he tell something was wrong? Maybe he didn’t share her sense that it held magic twisted and corrupted into unintended forms. 

The other elf reached out towards the shimmering, rippling surface of the artifact, and Neria felt a surge of panic. She had no idea what would happen if he touched it, but she knew it would be something terrible. The spike of terror seemed to free her from her paralysis, giving her a split second to act, and she lashed out instinctively with a mind blast. 

The other elf was slammed by the force of the spell, staggering away from the mirror. He tumbled back down the stairs, and Neria felt a spike of concern. She’d been trying to help him, not injure him! As she ran to him, the cave started to go dark around her. The voice that emerged from her mouth sounded strangely distant. “Tamlen! What did that thing do to you? We need to get the keeper.”

Neria came back to herself with a jolt, her twitching arms scattering papers and spilling her inkwell. Her face flushed as the sudden movement drew the attention of everyone else in the class. Including the instructor.

“Is there a problem, apprentice Surana?” Senior Enchanter Wynne’s voice could sound colder than an ice spell when she was annoyed with a foolish pupil. 

“No, Senior Enchanter.” Neria ducked her head and tried to tidy up her mess. “I must have dozed off and had a bad dream. I apologize for the disruption. It won’t happen again.” 

“See that it doesn’t.” 

*

But it did happen again. 

A few days later, Neria had another strange dream, although fortunately not in the middle of a class. This time, it was late at night, so she was in the apprentice dormitory and not surprised to be dreaming. 

She was running through an unfamiliar hallway. The solid stone walls made her think it was a fortress or castle. Shouts of anger and screams of pain echoed down the corridor, and her heart raced with panic and terror. Even though she didn’t know the details, it was clear something was terribly wrong. 

Neria carried a sword and shield, heavy weapons she had never held before and wasn’t even sure she would be able to lift if she were awake. But like the bow in her earlier dream, it didn’t matter. When men dressed in the armor of soldiers rushed at her, they fell dead, cut down by her sword before she was even aware of moving her arm. She ran on before they had even stopped groaning, desperate to reach her goal. 

Neria arrived at a doorway, and her heart soared with relief. Then it froze at the sight of a woman kneeling beside a man’s prone body, a pool of blood spreading on the floor around them. Neria remembered very little of her mother or father, but she was quite sure they had been elves. Nevertheless, she knew – with the certainty that comes in dreams – that these humans were her parents and she loved them desperately. 

Her father was pleading with her mother, begging her to flee to safety. But her mother refused to abandon him, and it was clear that he was too weak to stand, much less escape. 

Without a thought, Neria dropped to the floor at his side, sword and shield discarded in her haste. Her hands began to shine with the familiar blue glow of healing magic, the light growing brighter as she reached towards her father’s fallen form. The intensity of the spell nearly drowned out her mother’s shocked gasp, and her father was staring at her in awe and amazement. 

Neria couldn’t let them distract her. This was the most serious injury she had ever healed, and she wasn’t certain she could do it. She only knew that her father would die if she didn’t, and she couldn’t let that happen. 

When the last waves of healing energy pulsed out of her hands, Neria could feel that her father was strong enough to stand, if not entirely whole. “Now we can all go,” she said, hearing her voice emerge in a far deeper register than she expected, growing distant even as she spoke. 

Her parents’ responses were faint and unintelligible as the dream faded away. She awoke in the dormitory feeling elated and confused and so drained and utterly weary that she rolled over and went back to sleep almost immediately. 

*

After that, the dreams became almost familiar; Neria was no longer surprised to fall asleep and find herself in places she had never been, surrounded by people she didn’t know yet found familiar, always in desperate need of something. 

Neria almost wanted to laugh at the panic she felt running through her body as she stood over a drunk dwarf in a small stone room. What seemed like an insurmountable – and possibly fatal – obstacle to a dwarf was almost trivial for a mage with access to rejuvenation magic. In no time, the fighter was back on his feet and being berated into fighting form by her companion – whose voice gradually diminished as the dream receded. 

*

The next dream had the opposite solution. 

At first, Neria tried to reason with the irrational human. She didn’t know who he was, in or out of the dream. But his clothes said he was someone important, and the fear coiling in her chest said that he was someone dangerous. He and his human friends, faces and voices full of arrogant disdain, were standing in the middle of a group of frightened, desperate elves. Neria could tell that it was only a matter of time before someone on one side or the other did something stupid and everything came crashing down. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a red-haired elven woman – her cousin, she suddenly knew – grab a heavy bottle to use as a weapon, and there was no more time for talking. Before her cousin could carry out the attack and become the focus of the impending disaster – Maker only knew what happened to elves who assaulted human nobles, but none of the possibilities she could think of were good – Neria cast a spell to make the foolish man fall sleep. As he reeled and collapsed at her feet like a drunk passing out, she heard herself scornfully suggest that his companions take him home to sleep it off. 

Whatever response they might have made was lost to her as the voices became distant and her attention was captured by something that seemed far more important. 

Glancing up, Neria caught sight of a massive tree stretching far overhead, dark against the bright sky. The patterns its branches made were instantly familiar to her, and she couldn’t look away, her gaze locked onto the tangle of limbs. As the dream gradually faded, she strained her eyes against the growing dimness, searching intently for the shadow of a tree house. 

*

When she woke up, Neria spent a little while remembering everything she could think of about her childhood dream friends and comparing the memories to her recent strange dreams. Then she went to the library to read about dwarven culture and society. Paragon was the only dream friend she hadn’t revisited yet. If she was going to have a dream about solving a problem for him, she might as well know something about what she was getting into. 

 

Neria’s research paid off. Her next dream was every bit as complicated as she had expected. 

She was walking through oppressive stone tunnels with a group of dwarven men, carrying a sword dripping with darkspawn blood. Thinking back to the games she had played with Paragon, the gory weapon seemed fitting. The familiarity of it helped her stay calm as the sense of unease built. The dwarves around her were all tense, and she knew something very wrong was about to happen. 

Then they found the body. Just like she had been sure the injured human man in the earlier dream was her father, Neria knew instantly that this dwarf had been her brother. Growing up in the Tower without a real family, Neria had often wished for siblings, someone to trust and love. She couldn’t understand the relief she felt warring with her sorrow as she knelt by her murdered brother. 

As she struggled to make sense of her emotions, other dwarves arrived and things rapidly got worse. Trapped inside Paragon’s stocky, metal-clad body, Neria watched in growing horror and disbelief as her younger brother framed her for the murder, a tidy trap sewn up with false witnesses and paid-for testimony. She struggled not to give in to panic or fury. If she was going to help Paragon the way she had the rest of her dream friends, Neria needed to think clearly. 

She heard words come out of her mouth, denials and arguments. But none of it made any difference. The dwarves, led by her own father, were about to arrest her. All she had time for was a single spell. Neria had a sudden spark of inspiration. Hoping she was interpreting dwarven culture correctly from her reading, Neria seized control of her dream self and took a desperate gamble. 

“I swear I am innocent,” she said in Paragon’s rumbly deep voice. “May the Stone strike me down if I have shed the blood of my brother.” 

With that dramatic pronouncement, Neria clenched her hands tightly and subtly cast a stone fist spell, aimed straight at her treacherous younger brother. The large chunk of rock knocked him from his feet. Neria held her breath and waited as the cavern filled with a stunned silence. 

“Judgment of the Stone!” someone shouted, and soon the cavern echoed with loud dwarven voices raised in argument, reverence, and fear. 

Neria listened with satisfaction as the scout who had accused her dropped to his knees and began confessing his part in the plot. The sound of his pleas for mercy grew distant as the dream faded away, and by the time her father answered, his stern voice was little more than a whispering echo in her ears. 

*

Neria expected her dreams to be simpler after that. She had visited and helped each of her childhood dream friends, so Neria thought she was done with vivid glimpses of things that felt like fragments of another life. 

Instead, her dreams got worse. Her nights were haunted by shadowy forms that surrounded her, whispering promises, temptations, and fears. They were clearly Fade spirits and demons, but she had never felt them so strongly before. 

The things they offered her – freedom, power, a chance to be with her beloved – were confusing. When she was awake, Neria knew the demons’ promises were lies. They didn’t even make sense; Neria didn’t have a secret lover to run away with. But in her sleep, she was seduced by the whispered words and believed they offered the solutions to all of her problems. 

Neria began to worry that she was losing her mind. Maybe this was something that happened to all mages as they got more skilled. Maybe these dreams were a sign that she was ready for her Harrowing. 

But no one had ever told her to expect this, and she didn’t know who she could ask. If it wasn’t normal and word got around that Apprentice Surana was being visited by demons, Neria didn’t like to think about what might happen to her. 

She couldn’t tell anyone about her strange dreams for fear of ending up confined, Tranquil, or worse. 

*

Neria had always been curious and inclined to listen to other people’s conversations in case they were saying anything interesting. Now she began eavesdropping more deliberately, hoping to find out if her Harrowing was being planned or if any of the other mages were having strange dreams like hers. 

That was how she first heard the name Cousland. 

Two of the templars were talking, anonymous in their helmets, and Neria was paging through a book nearby, close enough to listen in when she wanted to. One of the templars mentioned he was worried about his brother, who was a guard at Highever. 

“I haven’t heard from him since the attack,” he said. “They say the only survivors were Teyrn Cousland, his wife, and their son.” 

The templars kept talking, probably more about the missing brother, but Neria wasn’t listening any more. Something about the name Highever sounded familiar to her, like she had been there a long time ago. Of course, she hadn’t; she never left the Tower. But it was naggingly familiar, like a forgotten memory or the truths that she only knew in her dreams. 

Suddenly, like a pattern of branches outlined against the sky, everything came into focus. She _had_ been at Highever, probably the night it was attacked, in her dream of being Not-King-Maric. That explained everything. Neria was pleased she had resolved the mystery and could go back to reading her book or listening for other interesting conversations. 

She only read one more paragraph before the book slipped from her hands. Neria barely heard the thump of it hitting the floor. 

If the attack on Highever had been real and not just something she had dreamed, then Not-King-Maric wasn’t her imaginary dream friend. He was a real person, a person who was probably named Cousland. 

Neria wondered how many of her other dreams were real. 

*

Once Neria knew the dark dreams weren’t hers, they were much less disturbing. Instead of being frightened, she spent her nights looking for clues about the real dreamer. 

It took her several days to figure out which of her fellow apprentices she was getting the dreams from, and then she spent a few more days deciding what to do about it. It wouldn’t be right to report someone to the senior enchanters for dealing with demons based on nothing more than a dream. But the dreams were becoming more frequent and detailed, so she couldn’t ignore the problem. Eventually, Neria settled for passing on a warning. 

The next day, she stopped one of her classmates after Senior Enchanter Wynne’s Creation lecture. “Solona, can I talk to you for a minute? Somewhere private?” 

Neria chose an out-of-the-way corner of the library and explained some of what was going on. She told Solona that she could wander the Fade and sometimes visit other people’s dreams. As she talked, the human girl’s eyes got very wide. Neria wondered if she had already suspected something was going on. 

“I swear I’ve never even kissed him!” Solona’s hysterical whisper carried farther than Neria was comfortable with in the silence of the library. Neria shushed her and made sure no one was watching them before she spoke again. 

“I didn’t think you had.” Neria had never expected that Solona might be the forbidden lover the dreamer had been pining for. It seemed unlikely, but it would certainly make things more complicated if it were true. 

Solona looked relieved, and her babbling sounded nervous rather than afraid. “Of course not. Because he’s a templar, and that would be completely forbidden.” 

It was Neria’s turn to be confused. “A templar? Who are you talking about?” 

“Who are _you_ talking about?” 

“Jowan.” Neria described the dreams she had been having and how she had eventually identified him as their source. “I think he might be getting into something dangerous, something he can’t control.” Even in the strictest privacy she could find in the Tower, Neria would never say the words _blood magic_ aloud. 

“Why are you telling me?” Solona looked stunned, trapped. She kept glancing around as if afraid the templars would swoop down and punish them both for even talking about this. 

“You’re his friend. I thought you should to know. I could be wrong, but if he comes to you for a favor, be very careful about helping him.” 

Solona nodded and thanked her before hurrying away. Neria wasn’t sure if she had really done the right thing, but she quit seeing Jowan’s dreams after that.


	3. Future

Neria hurried up the stairs of the tower. She didn’t understand why she had been called to the First Enchanter’s office. She’d passed her Harrowing weeks ago, and she hadn’t done anything since then to attract attention. She thought the First Enchanter shouldn’t even know her name, much less want to speak with her privately. 

When she arrived, breathless and anxious, she discovered that First Enchanter Irving had a guest. The man was armored, but he didn’t look at all like a templar. Still, he was unfamiliar, and that made Neria nervous. Especially when she wasn’t sure why she was here. 

Neria perched on the edge of the chair she was offered and tried not to fidget. The armored man remained standing. 

“Surana, the Warden-Commander would like to speak with you.” Irving nodded his head at the guest. 

Neria didn’t find that introduction very helpful or reassuring. 

The Warden-Commander looked serious and grim. His eyes made Neria nervous. “I am told you can travel in dreams. There is a Blight coming, and the Grey Wardens could use someone with your skills.” 

Neria had only shared her secret with one person. Solona must have told. 

The Warden-Commander seemed to expect something specific from her, and Neria had no idea if she was capable of doing what he wanted, even if she decided to. “I’m not sure I would be much help. I don’t have a lot of control over where I go.” 

“It would be sufficient for you to return to a place you have previously dreamt.” 

Neria thought she could probably do that. “I can try to help you, if I’m allowed time away from the Circle.” 

The Warden-Commander shook his head with a serious frown. “If you do what I ask, you will not be returning to your Circle. You must become a Grey Warden permanently.” 

Neria wasn’t sure if she wanted to be a Grey Warden. She didn’t even know exactly what it involved, beyond killing darkspawn and apparently traveling in dreams. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the Tower; she couldn’t remember ever being anywhere else when she wasn’t asleep. 

The First Enchanter smiled in sympathy. “It is a significant decision. Take some time to think on it. We shall need an answer in the morning before the Warden-Commander departs.” 

*

Neria had trouble falling asleep that night. 

She had a very big decision to make and didn’t know what to do. Neria wanted to help the Warden-Commander stop the Blight, but the idea of becoming a Grey Warden frightened her. As a child, she had dreamed of fighting darkspawn, but the reality was probably a lot scarier. Besides, it hadn’t really been her dream as much as it had belonged to Paragon and Not-King-Maric. Cousland, she ought to call him Cousland now that he was a real person with a name of his own. 

Neria had never felt very brave on her own. It was a lot easier to face the scary things in her dreams when her friends were there. Paragon was always so prepared, and nothing frightened Cousland. It was hard to be scared of anything around the wolf-girl, although Neria privately admitted that might have been because she was more scared _of_ the wolf-girl. Regardless, it would be much easier to be brave about fighting darkspawn as a Grey Warden if her dream friends were with her. 

Neria paused. What if they could be? If her dream friends were real instead of just dreams, maybe some of them would want to kill darkspawn with her for real instead of just as a dream game. She just needed to figure out how to ask them. 

*

Neria remembered the ropes she had made to help her dream friends travel to each other’s dreams when they were younger. She thought if she could find their dream places again, she might be able to use similar ropes to lead them all to somewhere they could meet and talk. 

Some of her friends’ dream places were easier to find than others, and some were more familiar than others once she found them. Neria was surprised at how much Theron’s forest looked exactly like she remembered it, but the smith girl’s tunnels were much darker and dirtier than they used to be. 

It took a little while, but Neria went to all of her friends’ dream places and tied ropes that led to a fire circle she had created for them. This was the first time Neria had tried making somewhere in her dreams instead of going to places that were already there. It was surprisingly easy to shape a little place out of nothingness. Creating a simple campfire and circle of logs for them to sit and talk didn’t take much more effort than she had needed to make the ropes. 

Neria waited by the fire until all of her friends arrived from their separate dreams before stepping forward into the light. She looked at the circle of faces, familiar yet changed, and smiled. “Thank you for coming. It’s been a long time.” 

Neria was a little surprised at how readily her dream friends accepted the explanation about where they were and how she had found them. Maybe she wasn’t the only one with fond memories of their childhood games. That should make this easier. 

“Remember how we used to dream about fighting darkspawn and being heroes?” Neria smiled as Paragon nodded and Cousland’s eyes lit up with excitement. “What if we could do it for real? I’m going to be a Grey Warden. You could come join me. All of you.” 

The wolf-girl’s grin was as feral as always, and Theron’s dark eyes looked calm and still like the shaded pools in his dream forest. The smith girl’s jaw was set with a familiar determination. No matter how their lives and dreams had changed, these were still her childhood friends. Neria was sure they could take on anything as long as they were together.


End file.
